spidergoat said:
Leo,
Miracles, in Buddhism, are a sign of mental power, and are seen as nothing special.
People were being conned then as now. What you say the Buddhists were saying is now said by the New Age Gurus who are asked to perform miracles in order to give some credibility to all of their highflown assertions. They say something to the effect that miracles would be easy enough for them, but that seeing miracles would be harmful to everybodies faith, that the miracles are unimportant to 'True' Believers, blah blah blah. You would think that a reasonable person would see that as an easy excuse for somebody who wants to blow off the local skeptics.
But for every hundred and fifty self-acclaimed spritualists who are too good to perform a miracle and who take great pride in practicing miraculous restraint, there are actual Saints who do perform Miracles, and do not express any guilt over it, or acknowledge that they may be doing great spiritual harm to people by verifying concretely that Miracles do happen and are possible.
Yes, there are magicians who can perform pretty good tricks. But study the Miracles of the Saints and you will find that the Real Thing is a bit more complicated than the usual card trick. When Francis of Paola was turned down when he asked for a ferry boat ride to Sicily, he took off his robe and stood on one edge of it and unfurled the rest of it to provide a sail, and he then windsurfed to Sicily on a piece of linen. Again, when a truck load of marble pillars arrived, only he and a little old lady were there to meet the wagon which had to unload and get back on the road. So, taking two 10 ton pillars and putting one under each arm, he asked the little old lady to do the same. The Wagon Drivers joined in and the commotion they made brought out other villagers who joined in, each person amazing himself that he could lift and carry a 10 ton stone pillar. You can suppose they were made of some medieval styrafoam and were swopped out for the real stone ones later, but, no, they were then and there placed in their foundation slots and have been there ever since. There was another instance in which the primary ceiling beam arrived on the building site and was found to be several meters too short to span the length of the roof as the foundation had been set. Francis told the work crew to hold one end while he pulled on the other. The Workers could hardly believe their eyes when they saw that Francis was able to 'stretch' the wooden beam another couple meters. Do any Magicians do such tricks, without veils or boxes, doors or covers to hide the magical mechanisms. Again, the Bishop insisted that Francis was becoming too much of a controversial figure and that he should not perform miracles so lightly. The next day a worker fell off a bell tower. Francis, seeing the accident, froze the man's descent in midair and asked him to be patient while he asked the Bishop for clarification on his policy on miracles, and whether it was okay to impromptu save the life of a worker. There was another worker who had been killed when a demolished building collapsed on him and crushed most of the bones in his body. Francis rose him from the dead and instantly mended the bones. Even if it was a trick, the worker subsequently became famous for then after showing absolutely no regard for his safety, and his consequent accidents required Francis to repair him time and time again. The worker became quite famous for towns and villages around and he quite enjoyed taking risks enough to severly injure himself just for the lark of being risen again from the dead.
Francis was good, but not the best of the Miraculous Saints. Joseph of Copertino could levitate... no, 'levitate' is hardly the word for it. Joseph could fly. Witnesses said he could dart back and forth as fast as an arrow and spin faster than a top. In doors where we might suspect mechanisms and wires, but also outside where he would fly over walls, trees, buildings, parks and roads while following processions. Not hoovering and floating along slowly, but darting above "as fast as an arrow". Nice magic trick! You would think that a modern day magician could be a pretty nice TV deal if he could duplicate was some stupid Monk was able to do 3 Centuries ago.
Then there was the supreme Saint, Vincent Ferrer. They said that the only miracle with Vincent Ferrer would be if he could go one day without a Thousand Miracles. He traveled with an entourage of 10,000 Flagellents. Just feeding them was a miracle. He would boast that with them walking 30 plus miles a day, naked and whipping themselves with bloody scurges, that none ever suffered sickness or fatigue. Upon entering towns or cities he would empty the hospitals and cure everybody. With crowds measuring in the hundreds of thousands, and without the aid of electronic amplifiction, he would address the crowd in his little old man voice speaking only Castillian Spanish, but wherever he was in Europe every person, no matter how far from the podium would hear Vincent Ferrer addressing them in their own native tongue. Nice trick! Some days his schedule would be so busy that he would delegate his miraculous powers to local priests who would go out to the surrounding clinics in adjoining villages. These Priests knew that ordinarily they had no miraculous powers, and so the miracle for them was to see themselves performing miracles -- to see twisted limbs straighten upon their touch, mutes speak, the blind see. And these were the local priests who had first hand knowledge of the people and inflictions they were healing.
Dominic tried to conceal his miracles. To keep himself from flying, he wound several yards of lumbar chain under his robes, to weigh himself down. As he grew older he became somewhat nearsighted and often other monks could see him at night approaching the locked gate to their compound, and not wishing to disturb the On Duty Gate Keeper he would carefully look about to see if anybody were watching, and not seeing everyone who watched, would levitate over the walls.
Dominic was cool. When he was still young he got caught up with a Sir Roger and his 800 Cathelic Knights who were beseiged by 5000 heretic knights who had been reinforced by a Baron from Spain. Sir Roger and his men did not wish to tolerate the discomfort of starving to death and so wished to get it over with in open battle, but Sir Roger made it a point to first apologize to his young Chaplain Dominic for having lead him to his death. Dominic apologized in his turn that quite to contrary he would have loved to have been made a martyr, but that he did not feel worthy and that it did not feel to him as though that is what would happen the next day, and he assured Sir Roger that he was a brilliant General and that Dominic was sure that Sir Roger would 'think of something'. The next day, as per appointment, the 5000 were assembled before the besieged Castle and ready for battle. At a glance, Roger was amazed with what he saw. There were less than 50 ranks of Cavalry in front of the Pavilians of the Spanish Count. The math instantly occurred to him that with his 800 men he could easily assemble Push and Block Teams that could crash into the Heretic Lines and shove them to either side and split them in a huge 'V' all the way up to the Pavillians of the Enemy Leader. And that is how the Battle played out --800 Men arranged in about 50 Ranks charged in and pressed the Heretics to the outside and captured the Baron who was the financial support of that Heretic Expendition. The Battle was over in minutes, as all of the Heretics agreed to come to terms so that they could continue being paid. Sir Roger would spend the rest of his life not taking credit for his own Victory but rather claiming it as one of Dominic's Miracles.
But we are to believe that these Catholic Saints were just showing off or were indulging in a kind of spiritual inferiority compared to the Buddhists, who, by not doing anything at all, were able to convince a great many deluded Spiritualists, that they were indeed superior. It is as though the Buddhists are answering the Catholic and Hindu Challenges to the Miraculous by saying "If you think that is something, then look at this -- Nothing". It is my opinion that anybody who gets sucked into an obvious dodge like that must be at least partially retarded.
